Thanks to the flood of so-called “worker’s rights” legislation and case law over the past generation, there are three words that are now music to the ears of every useless employee in the country: “hostile work environment.” A claim for a “hostile work environment” isn’t hard to put together, but it can result in millions of dollars in damages — often enough to destroy an entire company. And for that reason, hostile work environment claims have become the weapon of choice for both workers who are really bad at their jobs, as well as workers who actively want to sabotage their employers.
The underlying idea behind a “hostile work environment” claim is that, instead of having to show any single concrete injury, plaintiffs can simply point to a series of minor incidents that occurred over time. Each of these incidents in isolation may mean absolutely nothing. It could be a harmless joke that causes no mental distress whatsoever. But in a hostile work environment claim, plaintiffs are allowed to add up all of these little incidents together, and then make the case that offensive conduct in general was so “pervasive” in their workplace that they couldn’t be expected to perform their jobs.
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